


for the kids back home (part 1)

by batyatoon



Series: for the kids back home [1]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyatoon/pseuds/batyatoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Primrose Everdeen watches the 74th Hunger Games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for the kids back home (part 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amoama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/gifts).



_“Maybe you can win. ...You will try, won’t you? Really, really try?”_

I’ve never watched the Games all the way through in my life, not once. Not until now.

Of course viewing is compulsory, but like a lot of other laws, they don’t really enforce that one. Aside from the few public viewings and the Reaping, nobody stands over us to make sure we watch everything. So long as the screen was always on in the house during the Games, that was the important thing -- and I could curl up in a corner with Buttercup, or lie with my head in my mother’s lap or Katniss’s, or go out to the yard and brush Lady. Anything but sit there and watch the bigger kids hurt each other until all but one were killed.

This year is different. This year I can’t pull away, no matter how much I want to.

And I hate it sometimes that I want to. Even though I can’t help Katniss by watching, it makes me feel small and cowardly every time I want to look away. So I don’t let myself. I have to learn to be tough now. I’m twelve this year, I’m a year older now than Katniss was when our father died and our mother went silent and unreachable for so long. If Katniss doesn’t come back --

But Katniss has to come back.

. . . . .

The worst thing about the introduction of all the Tributes is always knowing that almost all of them will die: the beautiful confident ones, the quiet scared ones, all but one out of the twenty-four. This year the worst thing about it is knowing that if I want Katniss to come back, that means wanting all the others to die.

All of them, even the girl my age from District Eleven. Rue.

I see her first in the recap of the Reaping, stepping alone onto the stage in silence. Like I almost did, but nobody volunteers for her the way Katniss did for me. My mother’s already holding me tight; when the man from the Capitol calls for volunteers and only the wind answers, her arms tighten until for a moment I can’t breathe. I don’t say anything. I understand it.

When we watch the opening ceremonies, I’m not paying attention to most of the Tributes; I’m waiting for Katniss. But Rue catches my eye for just a moment, in the next-to-last chariot, tiny next to the boy from Eleven towering beside her -- and then Katniss is on the screen, with fire billowing around her but somehow not burning her, and I’m trying so hard to make that a good omen that I forget everything else.

Only until the next night, though. Because the next night is when the interviews air, and there are all the Tributes again, stepping up one at a time to laugh and banter with the blue-haired host like there’s nothing wrong in the world.

Rue wears a gauzy dress with fluttery wings, and all I can think of is the dragonflies that settle on the meadow flowers in spring, pretty and fragile, so easily crushed by a careless hand. She's no smaller than I am, but among all the bigger Tributes -- some of them practically adults -- she looks small enough to step on.

 _Take care of her_ , I want to tell Katniss, _look out for her, she won't make it through alone_ \-- but that's impossible, would be impossible even if I could talk to Katniss, because Rue _can't_ make it through if Katniss is going to come back. And Katniss has to come back.

I don’t want anyone to die. I don’t _want_ to want anyone to die.

* * *

  
_Composite photo: primroses and rue_


End file.
